Objects to comment made during joint meeting of West Amwell Township Committee, Planning Board.
By: Linda Seida
WEST AMWELL The president of the Sourland Planning Council has demanded an apology from a member of West Amwell’s Planning Board for saying the council is "prostituting itself" by accepting a $100,000 grant.
Bernie Meader, a former mayor who now sits on the township Planning Board, made the comment during a recent joint meeting of the Planning Board and the Township Committee.
The grant was awarded late in 2004 to create a regional plan. The state Department of Environmental Protection stipulations said the plan would formed from the ground up, "with a huge amount of public involvement," according to Planning Council President Andrea Bonette. This differed from the regional plan for the Highlands special resource area, which was created from the top down, beginning with government and filtering down to the people, Ms. Bonette explained.
Members of the Sourland Planning Council attended the joint session Aug. 15 to discuss the possibility of expanding the Sourlands designation within West Amwell’s borders.
The board and the committee ultimately agreed to expand the designation from merely including the ridge to also including the foothills, but not before the insult had been flung.
The board voted 6-3 to expand the designation. Mr. Meader, Hal Shute and Jeff Ent voted against the proposal. Voting in favor were Chairwoman Nance Palladino, Joan Van der Veen, Joan Smith, Mayor Tom Molnar, Ron Shapella and Sean Pfeiffer. Board member Alex Greenwood was absent, allowing Mr. Pfeiffer to vote as an alternate.
The committee voted 2-1 in favor, with Deputy Mayor Gary Bleacher casting the lone nay vote. Mayor Molnar and Mr. Shapella voted in favor.
Ms. Bonette subsequently wrote a letter protesting the comment to Mayor Molnar and Ms. Palladino. Ms. Bonette said she sent the letter "on my own nickel, not as a representative of any municipality or nonprofit group."
In the letter she said of Mr. Meader, "For someone who has never, to the best of my knowledge, attended a Sourland Planning Council meeting in the last 20 years, I think he owes me and the trustees of this group an explanation. When an elected/appointed official makes a public statement like that on the record it has the potential to create a very distorted picture, and, since he felt it important enough to say in public, I must assume he truly believes it.
"I would like him to explain to the members of this organization exactly what he meant. He will have a perfect opportunity at our annual reorganization meeting which will be held at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday evening, Oct. 3, at the Hopewell Train Station.
"If he does not appear or send a written, signed statement, I will assume he intends to either retract this assertion or to implicitly apologize.
"I appreciate the courtesy and professionalism that was displayed by the majority of board and committee members present, and the efforts of the chair of the meeting to maintain civil discourse. However, everyone present heard this remark and knows who made it. I am bringing this problem to the attention of the committee and the board in the hopes that such blatant disrespect to any members of the audience does not serve the township well."
Copies of the letter also were sent to the committee and the board as well as to attorney Steve Sacks-Wilner, vice president of the Sourlands Planning Council.
Mr. Meader did not return phone calls seeking comment.
"I was pretty offended" by Mr. Meader’s comments, Ms. Bonette said in a later phone interview. "I was just very angry. We have worked for 20 years to try to educate people."
Township officials who were in office in 2004 chose the narrower designation of just the ridge of the Sourlands, opposing a recommendation made by the Sourland Smart Growth project. The votes of the board and the committee in August reverse the earlier decision and ensure a much larger area of West Amwell will be included as part of the Sourlands.
The state has not yet declared the Sourland region a special resource area, but if the state makes that proclamation, West Amwell’s recent vote to expand the designation within its borders will have a significant impact. Areas located within the Sourlands would face guidelines to manage natural resources and land use. The protection of natural resources would be a priority.
The 90-square-mile region known as the Sourlands includes parts of seven municipalities the townships of West Amwell, East Amwell, Hopewell, Montgomery and Hillsborough, the city of Lambertville and Hopewell Borough.
The Sourland’s surface waters are the headwaters for a supply of drinking water that serves millions of people. The region also is the site of the largest contiguous forest in central New Jersey, and it is the third largest forest in the state. Migrating birds on the Atlantic Flyway need the deep forest for a place of rest and a source of food.
Numerous endangered and threatened species make their home in the Sourlands, including the Cooper’s hawk, the wood turtle and the barred owl.

